* * * * *

Let us, next, consider some of the difficulties and mistakes attaching
to the WILL. Here there are the questions of world-renown, questions
known even in Pandemonium--Free-will, Responsibility, Moral Ability, and
Inability. It is now suspected, on good grounds, that, on these
questions, we have somehow got into a wrong groove--that we are lost in
a maze of our own constructing.

[A STRONG WILL THE GIFT OF NATURE.]

I. We shall first notice a misconception akin to some of the foregoing
mistakes respecting the feelings. In addressing men with a view to spur
their activity, there is usually a too low estimate of what is implied
in great and energetic efforts of will. Here, exactly as in the cheerful
temperament, we find a certain constitutional endowment, a certain
natural force of character, having its physical supports of brain,
muscle, and other tissue; and neither persuasion, nor even education,
can go very far to alter that character. If there be anything at all in
the observations of phrenology, it is the connection of energetic
determination with size of brain. Lay your hand first on the head of an
energetic man, and then on the head of a feeble man, and you will find
a difference that is not to be explained away. Now it passes all the
powers of persuasion and education combined to make up for a great
cranial inequality. Something always comes of assiduous discipline; but
to set up a King Alfred, or a Luther, as a model to be imitated by an
ordinary man, on the points of energy, perseverance, endurance, courage,
is to pass the bounds of the human constitution. Persistent energy of a
high order, like the temperament for happiness, costs a great deal to
the human system. A large share of the total forces of the constitution